new link

i just added a new link to my sidebar. it's for the yarn harlot, a blogger, comedian, and knitter (not necessarily in that order). i'm a sometime knitter too, so when i heard about the blog (in today's p-i), i decided to link to it.

speaking of knitting...i'm currently working on a hat for a friend. i have completed other projects, too: a sweater for myself, and sweaters for 3 of my nieces and nephews (the 4th--my second niece--had not yet been born at the time). my next project will be to complete a brown sweater (it's man-sized, not arguchik-sized) i started several years ago. i'm hoping it will fit glaucon. we'll see. it's somewhat close to done already--i have finished the back and the sleeves, and the front is about half knitted. then i'll just need to assemble and finish it.

i've been feeling extremely run down over the last few days--emotionally and physically wrung out. i'm not sure if it's from traveling, jet lag, or if it's from dealing with my parents' legal and medical situation. there are things we're dealing with, "we" being my siblings and myself, that i haven't blogged about and probably won't. it concerns my parents' finances. long story short: we need to take over, and have been figuring out the legal processes for doing that. at the same time, we're trying to have them medically evaluated so we can explore the possibility of getting one or both of them on one of the new anti-dementia drugs like aricept. there's a whole class of these drugs out now, but aricept is the only one i'm familiar with so far. anyway, we had a meeting with our parents' estate lawyer yesterday that went well, in terms of finding out what non-adversarial options are available to us under the legal framework that our parents put in place while they were still "all there." but it went very badly in terms of our father's response. he became extremely agitated, combative, and paranoid about the meeting (he didn't understand the purpose for it, even when we tried to explain it in very clear, simple terms), and refused to even get out of the car. so...we had the meeting without him.

most likely i'm worn out from all of this, in combination. all i've got to say is...i'm damn glad i'm not an only child. this would be excruciating if i weren't sharing it with a bunch of other people who are thinking and feeling pretty much the same things i am. my thoughts and feelings are a conflicted, tangled mess, and it really helps to be able to talk about it with my sisters and brother. i'm also just glad that i'm not carrying 100% of the responsibility on my own shoulders. the four of us together have formed a pretty useful little democracy here, and we debate our options before deciding what to do. because we are unanimously in agreement about the necessity of immediately taking legal steps to protect our parents' interests, i'm 4X more confident that we're doing the best, right thing.

p.s. unfortunately, i'm also beginning to feel like it might be time for me to relocate from seattle, to someplace that's closer to my parents. i really don't ever want to live in michigan again, but it would be nice to live within driving distance, so i could visit them more than once per year (which is all i can afford as a graduate student). one more motivation to crank on my dissertation.

(my to-do list for the next ~year and a half: 1. finish dissertation. 2. defend it and graduate. 3. find "real" job!!!)

p.p.s.

plus, i miss my sweetheart. :-(

RWP

READING: today it has been people magazine. seriously, that's all i've got in me. that and i took a good half hour to read the transcript of carolyn hax's online chat on the washington post website. she does her regular column 3X per week (sunday, wednesday, and friday), and on fridays she does a live chat from noon until 2:30 or 3 (eastern time). i don't usually tune in for the "live" part of the chat, i just log in at 3 or so and read the transcript. i'm also still working on blue mars and alien chic, two books i posted about last week. i'm in the process of writing up my current thoughts about/analyses of 4 different texts from foucault, too: discipline and punish; the history of sexuality: an introduction; "questions of method," and "on governmentality," both from the foucault effect; and his lecture on biopower from society must be defended (which is one of the volumes in the college de france lectures series). i haven't been able to work on that today, though. my brain is fried.

WEARING: jeans. no shoes. new purple-y pedicure. beige-y long-sleeved v-neck shirt that has a muted, complex floral design printed onto it. it sounds somewhat tacky, but it's actually pretty cool.

PLANNING: going out for tapas with my sisters and my friend kelli tonight (kelli is one of my 6th grade friends; i went to the bodyworlds exhibit with another 6th grade friend named tim a couple of weeks ago--he lives in vancouver, WA; and i just got off the phone with my third 6th grade friend, roger, who lives in the detroit area). tomorrow morning i'm baking 2 birthday cakes: banana cake for my dad, and angel food cake for my sister barb. around noon or shortly after, my brother will arrive from detroit, and then my siblings and i will have a "family meeting" to discuss our parents' situation and what we should do in the coming weeks and months. tomorrow evening is the big dual birthday celebration, for my sister barb (her birthday was august 29th) and my dad (he turns 82 on september 19th). perhaps there will be movie-going tomorrow night, i'm not sure yet. sunday morning (early!) i fly back to seattle. there is talk of brunch with glaucon and perhaps a couple of other friends, after i get back. i hope that happens.